Viticulture 4+

AI is too slow

I love Viticulture, it's one of my top 3 favorite board games, I have been hyped for digital Viticulture's release. Unfortunately the AI's turns are too slow it's practically unplayable. I played a 2 player game with 1 easy AI to try out the app. Their turns were a minute long wait. I timed it, 65 seconds until it triggered my turn again. And that's with just the "ai is computing" wait, that's not even them taking lengthy involved actions and decision with a changing and interesting screen to look at. They don't actually make moves until the final seconds.

I look forward to playing the game, and really hope the AI turns get quicker. Cause as is it's irritating the play and it takes a really long time to play. I can't imagine how long playing with multiple AI's will take. Which is a shame cause the game is without Tuscany's vastly improved board (which has bonuses at the 1st spot) So to unlock bonuses you'll need a minimum of 3 players or 2 AI's.

Lastly, it was not super clear during the mama & the papa setup that the game was waiting on a actual choice on the papa card to progress. A highlight around the two box options would be most helpful. I could only imagine how confused brand new players would be.

Should be 5 stars

I encountered a bug that essentially destroyed my chance of competing in the game. You can have at most 5 workers and you need all 5 to have a chance. There are 2 special workers you can train, one of those is a Merchant. He has the power to take an action in a season that has already passed. With the latest update they curtailed his power a lot, but he is still very useful. I am in a game where I could not play my Merchant. I tried all the remedies in the in game help faqs and in the community help all to no avail. That puts me down one worker and puts me out of the game. So I filed a bug report and got no response. Meanwhile my opponents are complaining to me that I'm not taking my turn. So I took an action which works in ever other game I have tried it with, and I have tried it with around 10-15 different games. I deleted and reinstalled the app. It came back and lost my game... sort of. I am only in one game and the main screen can't find it but the menu on the side sees it. When i do the refresh selection, the main screen comes up with no games found but the menu on the right side pops up with a yellow one indicating that it found one game. So at least one programmer did his/her job correctly. I sent in another bug report but again I got no response. Sigh. Please fix this bug, it is a game killer.

Developer Response ,

Hello!
We are sorry that you encountered issues with our game, and that we didn't respond to your report yet. Because we are a small team we can't always answer every bug report or message. But you can be sure that we check them and it's also possible that we already fixed this issue for a future update. We will check it again and hope to share a solution soon.
Is it possible that it's a misunderstanding of the controls? Do you know that you can long press an action to open a worker wheel to choose your special worker (merchant) from? And that you can change seasons by clicking the different season icons on the side of the screen?

About finding the running game and it not showing up in the running games list: Please check if you chose the correct tab in the running games tab. There are different one for local and online games.

Sending bug reports via the bug report tool is important and the correct way so we can get the needed save game data of this specific game. If you ever need help with any other game related problem you have also the option to contact our support@digidiced.com mail.

Best regards, Team Digidiced

A solid start 🍷 🍇

I’ve been waiting for this to come out for a while, and... it’s good. Not great, but definitely good. 👍

Here’s what would improve gameplay for me:

1) The option to display or hide the worker placement location titles is currently a tiny question mark in the left corner. It was not clear to me what that did. A clearer icon design/tutorial would help. OR just do what Agricola digital edition did, and create a temporary pop-up with relative info when users press and hold on a location.

2. AI gameplay speed is buried in the backend of the user interface. That and other options need to become part of a guided intro system when you open the app for the first time.

3. Not sure why there is a permanent “card” icon on the bottom of the screen that lets me look through the entire deck of available summer and winter cards. 🤷‍♂️ You can’t just grab the decks of cards in the real game and browse through them for fun, so I’m not sure why it’s in this digital edition. Could that spot be replaced with something more useful to gameplay?

4. Lastly, and for me, the game app icon itself could use a bit of a refresh. The current red/green design colors invoke more Christmas vibes than wine making. 🍇 An idea: Keep the classic viticulture “V”, make it more of a deep red, then put some of the fields (creams and hunter greens) from the box art/game opening screen behind it and you should have something that clearly says, “this is that game you know and love.” 🍷